When my son was in first grade he created a museum in our home, complete with gallery spaces and rules like “don’t let your animals use the bathroom in the museum.” In his gallery spaces he organized his collections. He created label copy. Admission fees were posted.

There really is a museum for everything. People are collectors and memory and nostalgia are important to us. Categorizing and organizing our collections for display is important too.

This morning I woke up to this post from Smithsonian about the American Museum of the House Cat and I figured I would post about a few of my favorite out of the ordinary museums.

Check out some of these unusual museums.

Museum of Broken Relationships – A crowd-sourced museum with virtual and physical spaces with a collection of items that represent broken relationships.

Idaho Potato Museum –  Pretty self-explanatory. The history of the potato and all things potato. I would love to see the gift shop in this place.

Mutter Museum – Museum of medical history. You can see the cast of Chang and Eng and Einstein’s brain. Great online exhibitions and Civil War lesson plans too.

Busy Beaver Button Museum – I have written about using  buttons and ephemera in the classroom on this blog before. Here and here. Check out all these categories of buttons that can be used in the classroom.

Umbrella Cover Museum –  I love the story of how this museum began: “Having discovered that she had five or six umbrella covers she didn’t know what to do with, and eventually stealing one from a local department store, she decided to start a museum.”